MacKenzie Gore has been striking out batters at a healthy rate to start the year, and a matchup against the strikeout-happy Boston Red Sox should allow him to further pad his stats, and we’ll look to capitalize on it. Let’s get to our best MLB prop bets today.
Best MLB Prop Bets Today
Gore is off to a promising start to his third year as a pro. After 34 innings (seven starts, 2-3), his xFIP (3.19), SIERA (3.25) and xERA (4.11) are all career bests. Notably, he lowered his walk rate from 9.8% (3.76 per nine innings) to 7.4% (2.91 per nine, career low) and increased his strikeout rate from 25.9% (9.97) to 28.2% (11.12 per nine, 81st percentile, career high). While his strikeout rate should see some negative regression (both his called strikes/whiffs and swinging-strike percentages are only slightly up from last season), he’s still projected for around a 26% to 27% strikeout rate for the year. Gore strikes out batters from both sides of the plate at a similar rate — 28.2% of righties and 28.1% of lefties. He throws around 90 to 100 pitches per game and should be good for roughly five innings and change (he’s not the most efficient pitcher, going for six innings only once this year despite his highish pitch count).
Gore only had even or more strikeouts twice this year (against Oakland and Texas) but today’s matchup against Boston is a great opportunity to do so again. Boston has the highest collective strikeout rate against lefties this year – 29.2%. Six batters in Boston’s lineup struck out at a high clip against lefties year: Romy Gonzalez (40.5% strikeout rate in a limited sample size of 37 plate appearances), Connor Wong (37%), Garrett Cooper (31.3%), Jarren Duran (30.6%), Ceddanne Rafaela (29.6%) and Vaughn Grissom (25.7%). Only Duran has a meaningful sample size against lefties this year (52 plate appearances), and he’s striking out 25% of the time against them. Duran (25%) and Rafaela (27.3%) strike out at a high clip this year in a small sample size, while Wong (20%) and Cooper (21.7%) do so at a slightly lower rate. The sample sizes for both Grissom (seven plate appearances) and Gonzales (11) are too small to address.
Tyler O’Neil and Rafael Devers both strike out at a high rate against southpaws this season, but we shouldn’t expect that to be the case moving forward given their low strikeout rates against them last year.
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The weather for today’s matchup isn’t bad for pitching, with temperatures in the mid-50s, light wind blowing from right to left and a low game total of 7.5. While the odds for Gore going over 6.5 strikeouts don’t match his hit rate of the prop this year, the matchup is as good as it gets. At +100, odds that are better than Pinnacle’s (-104), we’ll back Gore to record at least seven punchouts in today’s outing.
Best MLB Prop Bet Today: MacKenzie Gore Over 6.5 Strikeouts (+100 at DraftKings)
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